MacSailing.net

I'm outfitting my sail boat for blue water cruising and am planning to build in a mac mini to run MacENC as my real time dashboard.

Boat is 36 foot traditional cruiser - currently minimally equipped with speed/depth, VHS, and compass. I've been using handheld GPS for most ocean trips.

I'm moving from Puget Sound to San Diego and want to upgrade with radar, tiller pilot, and ais transponder (so I can hopefully be 'seen' in the ocean and the fog).

Wondering what components people have integrated with MacENC successfully. My electronics guy has proposed two different radar systems - one is Furuno 1715 LCD/18" http://www.consumersmarine.com/modperl/p...1&i=200065 (seems like "basically just radar") which is cool if I can just feed the data and view it on MacEnc.

Other suggestion is Furuno NavNet VX 2 system 1834C/NT http://www.go2marine.com/product.do?no=196571F which is way more money and seems to also want to do MacENC's job?

I'm new to all this boat electronics stuff (although I work as a Mac/iPhone developer and would donate programming effort to get a better system for myself).

What would you experts buy for radar? Is the less expensive one fine if what I'm looking for is help through fog into marinas, weather info, and big iron avoidance?

Second:

AIS - seems you can spend a lot:
http://www.boatersland.com/furfa50.html ($1450)

or much less:
http://www.navsoftware.com/comar-csb-200...onder.html ($720)

and I can't really see a huge difference here.

What am I missing?

Finally - interfacing the tiller pilot to the Mac - what kind of benefits does this have? Can I feed it course info from the computer? I'm looking at a Navico TP32 (beefiest I could find). I'm only using this for motoring - I have a Monitor vane for steering under sail.

Won't provide specific hardware recommendations (AIS or RADAR), but just point out some things.

- MacENC does not overlay RADAR scan on the chart, but does plot tracked targets and the cursor via NMEA-0183 RADAR data ..

http://www.gpsnavx.com/html/nmea.html


- An AIS transponder can be used in lieu of a GPS when used with MacENC. MacENC is compatible with all that support high speed NMEA-0183

If you are considering both devices plus an Autopilot you will need to use a NMEA multiplexer such as the Shipmodul Miniplex lite ..

http://www.shipmodul.com/en/miniplex-lite.html


p.s. You can get by with a much lighter AP by using the Monitor windvane to steer even under power. The AP is used for the vane and not the tiller.

re: autopilot to steer monitor - Scanmar recommends against this under power as they feel that the vibration caused by having the paddle in the prop wash causes excessive wear on the mechanism.